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The IBJ Podcast with Mason King: Daily Summaries Delivered
by IBJ Media
A weekly take on business news in central Indiana from the Indianapolis Business Journal.
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- Today56 min
Indy logistics guru mixes hobby with supply-chain expertise to create heirloom-quality watch brand
Once upon a time, our relationship with consumer technology started and ended with how we could tell time. In the 1800s, your pocket watch or your wristwatch might have been the most complicated and vital piece of technology you owned, and folks passed them down over generations as signature artifacts of the original owners. Today, watches or the personal devices we use to tell time are unimaginable complex and versatile, compared to a century ago, but they’re surprisingly disposible. Their obsolescence is practically guaranteed within five years. No one is bragging about refurbishing and wearing their father’s iPhone as a cherished keepsake. Adam Fleddermann approached the watch-making industry from two directions. He brought a deep respect for the role mechanical watches used to play in business and family life while leveraging his up-to-the-minute professional expertise in logistics. Over a few years he turned a hobby into a family business, designing his own watch models, sourcing parts from the global supply chain and arranging to have them assembled by artisans in Kokomo. His brand of watches inspired by German culture is known as Fleddermann Von Rieste, and one of the latest models is a limited-edition timepiece licensed by Purdue University using several of the school’s signature design elements. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Fleddermann discusses the entrepreneurial origins of his Indianapolis-based company during the pandemic and his drive to create sophisticated timepieces that can survive to become multigenerational heirlooms. He also discusses finding the right entry point when nearly everyone owns a device that tells time and the high-end watch market is populated with several well-established brands.
- 1 weeks ago54 min
Pigasus Pictures takes big swing with $10M movie ‘Little Five,’ filmed in Bloomington
For its 10th movie, Bloomington-based Pigasus Pictures has mounted its biggest production yet, with a $10 million budget and a key role played by one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Indiana has more than its fair share of inspirational sports movies, and Pigasus is diving deep into the genre with “Little Five,” the story of the first Women’s Little 500 bicycle race on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus. Pigasus is the lead production company, but it received a boost from co-producer Somewhere Pictures, founded by Oscar-winning actress Anne Hathaway. Pigasus CEO Zachary Spicer returns to the IBJ Podcast this week to talk about one of the recent low points in his career that inspired him to develop a movie about the first Women’s Little 500. He discusses the evolution of the concept, raising the $10 million and his longtime connection with Hathway that led to her company’s participation. He also reminisces about filming in Bloomington, where he attended IU, and how the football team’s national championship helped the production team. Plus, we get the lowdown on the Pigasus project “Trash Mountain,” that debuted last Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival.
- 2 weeks ago38 min
Pete the Planner on rising bond yields and why the future ‘is starting to look scary’
The financial media’s laser pointer is often so jittery that it’s tough to figure out which developments are most important to your financial life. The topic that received the most focus last week was rising bond yields. As we’ll discuss in this week’s podcast, that issue could have serious legs, and its feet appear to be pointing downhill. You might be surprised to know that the yield on a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond is considered by many to be the most important interest rate in the world. It plays a big role in determining your cost when you borrow money – from a mortgage to a car loan to a credit card. And news that yields are rising means that bonds are falling out of favor in the marketplace, indicating there’s considerable anxiety over the government’s ability to handle inflation, budget deficits and the war in Iran, among several concerns. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Peter Dunn, aka IBJ columnist Pete the Planner, joins us to help focus on the meaning behind rising bond yields. He also discusses the duality that many Americans face in the current financial system, in which some folks thrive and others fall behind. You’ve probably heard it referred to as the K-shaped economy.
- 3 weeks ago29 min
Developer Tag Birge unfolds his philanthropic strategy for disadvantaged students, public art
IBJ celebrated philanthropy, nonprofit organizations and the businesses who support them at our second annual Nonprofit Excellence Awards event on Aug. 4 at the Indiana Roof Ballroom. During the event, IBJ reporter Dave Lindquist interviewed Taggart Birge, the 2025 winner of the Philanthropist of the Year Award. Tag, who is a real estate investor, and his wife annually support scholarships, education programs and public art, among other efforts. For this week’s IBJ Podcast, we bring you that conversation. Dave talks in detail with Tag about how he and his wife have settled on their philanthropic strategy and the personal connections that led them to focus particularly on helping disadvantaged students. And you’ll hear Tag answer questions submitted by those in the room at the event. You can find a full video of the 2026 Nonprofit Excellence Awards event here.
- 4 weeks ago50 min
Why would a young couple from South Africa open a bookstore on Mass Ave?
For all of the people who have said at some point in their lives, “Wouldn’t it be fun to open a small bookstore,” consider the story of Julia Breakey and Jake Budler, a married couple who opened Tomorrow Bookstore on Mass Ave in 2023. They hurdled all of the concerns that likely dissuade most folks from following through. Questions like, “How do I get startup capital?” How do I compete with Amazon?” “Why try to sell printed books in an increasingly digital world?” And “How can I, a constitutionally introspective person, survive a career that requires intense customer service?” The origin story of Tomorrow Books seems all the more unlikely given that Breakey and Budler hail from South Africa and are in their very early 30s. But they had a built-in advantage, in that Jake has a wealth of expertise related to startups as an employee of a global firm that supports high-growth entrepreneurs. In this week’s edition of the podcast, Julia and Jake explain how they chose to settle in Indianapolis and open their own business, how they divide the duties of running a bookstore, how they found the right mix of financing and why they have embraced the recent wave of new independent booksellers in Indianapolis instead of considering them competitors.
- Aug 17, 202648 min
Why is the Parkview Health system expanding into central Indiana?
On July 27, public officials in West Lafayette joined local business leaders and executives from the Fort Wayne-based Parkview Health system to break ground on the site of a planned $200 million hospital and medical office building expected to create 250 health care jobs. The Lafayette/West Lafayette area already is served by two hospitals in the IU Health and Franciscan Health systems, but the leaders assembled said the area’s growth made clear the need for the new facility. Meanwhile, Parkview has been working through an agreement with Lebanon-based Witham Health Services, which provides medical services to residents throughout Boone County, to join Parkview later this year. That would bring Witham’s hospital under Parkview’s purview, as well as several clinics across the area. Parkview is also building a freestanding emergency department and urgent care facility in Marion. And Parkview and Noblesville-based Riverview Health are nearly a year into a managed-services agreement aimed at getting the struggling county-owned hospital system’s finances in order. Parkview started growing outside of the Fort Wayne area in 1995 and now counts more than a dozen hospitals, medical centers and health institutes across northern Indiana and northwest Ohio. And It’s looking to continue to expand. In this week’s podcast, Dr. Greg Johnson and John Bowen, two Parkview executives leading the system’s growth, discuss the push into central Indiana and what makes it attractive for expansion. They also cover how they determine demand for another market player, what they think differentiates Parkview from other systems, and how they plan to staff the West Lafayette hospital.
- Aug 10, 202645 min
Lafayette reporter took a buyout and quit the business. He returned as one-man news service.
Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Longtime subscribers to the Lafayette Journal and Courier newspaper read the work of Dave Bangert over 32 years in his roles as a reporter, editor and columnist. He was so highly regarded that in early 2021 he became one of a handful of journalists to receive the Sagamore of the Wabash. That’s a statewide honor awarded by the governor for outstanding leadership, achievements and/or civic contributions. One could assume it was meant as a career capper. Bangert had taken a buyout from newspaper owner Gannett in late 2020, with vague plans to get a normal day job for several years until hitting typical retirement age. That’s not what happened. Within a few months he received a few obvious signs that his news career might not be over. He soon started carving out a home for himself on the online Substack platform named Based in Lafayette, allowing him to create a news website and shoot stories to subscribers via email. He quickly became a one-man news bureau for Lafayette, West Lafayette and the rest of Tippecanoe County, making all the editorial decisions himself and leveraging sources he developed over three decades. He has nearly 10,000 subscribers between two basic tiers — some who receive a limited amount of content for free and others who pay a fee to see everything. (The latter options are $7 per month, $70 per year or $150 per year.) He works just as hard as he did for the Journal and Courier, but now it’s all on his own terms. In this week’s episode of the podcast, Bangert explains how he knew it was time to get back in the game, how he assembled the business plan, how he covers his turf as a one-man band and what he has learned about the news business from his view on Substack.
- Aug 3, 202656 min
Entrepreneur with ADHD used AI to stay on track. Now it’s a core part of his company.
Josh Driver, CEO of Indianapolis-based Selflessly, jokes that he’s practically in a common law marriage with his AI assistant, named Phil. (That’s short for “philanthropy,” which is Selflessly’s focus.) They’re a good match: Phil handles much of the administrative drudgery and helps clients figure out their philanthropic strategies so Driver can stay focused on big-picture strategy and client relations. But they get into the occasional tiff, and Phil can overstep his bounds. In fact, he recently went way off script with a client. Such an episode points up the risks in turning over so much responsibility to AI. But Driver sees Phil as an indispensable tool and interwove it into Selflessly’s recent from-the-ground-up platform rebuild. His interest in AI’s potential was piqued once he began using it to bypass some of the pitfalls of having attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Recent episodes of the IBJ Podcast have focused on potential long-term risks of the widespread use of AI. In this week’s edition, we use Selflessly as a case study in how AI is being used by a small business right now. Driver also discusses his early career in emergency medicine — specifically, burn and wound care — and how that led him to technology and nonprofits.
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